The software driving Bitcoin's network has been upgraded with security fixes addressing a problem that inoperative bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox blamed for losing nearly half a billion dollars worth of bitcoins.
The open-source software, known as Bitcoin-QT, has been rebranded as "Bitcoin Core" to highlight that it runs the core infrastructure of the virtual currency's transaction and verification network.
Upgrading Bitcoin's software is a delicate operation, and many of the changes have been under discussion for months. The market capitalization of all bitcoins in circulation is roughly US$8 billion, according to figures from Blockchain.info, and a mistake could be costly.
But the virtual currency has weathered innumerable negative events over the past five years and is still seeing growing adoption by businesses and retailers as an alternative payment platform.
The latest version of bitcoin's software, 0.9.0, contains more than a half dozen fixes for transaction malleability, according to the release notes for the software.
Bitcoin Core also contains a new feature for payment requests. Previously, merchants couldn't attach a note describing an invoice, and people also could not supply a refund address to a merchant.
As Wladimir van der Laan of the Bitcoin Core Development Team wrote, the latest version automatically supplies a refund address. The payment requests can also be cryptographically signed to ensure the bitcoins are going to the intended recipient.